Events, Events Everywhere in 2012!
Developers continue to be in hot demand as we enter 2012 with many events eager to cater to them - so many events it is becoming much harder to choose which to attend. I see operators/carriers doing more and more to attract developers to their SDKs and APIs. A couple of years ago, only a few were hosting developer events; now all are hosting at least one per year with many additional hackathons, seminars and workshops.
Much more emphasis will be placed on how developers can make money with their applications. More events with this focus will be forthcoming in 2012 and beyond. All conferences will include it as one of their conference streams if they are not dedicated the whole conference to it. Other prominent areas include: Mobile Payments, NFC and Social Media and anything to do with Apps.
Mobile World Congress will continue to attract large numbers of mobile ecosystem members including developers. GSMA really hit a home run with App Planet at MWC in 2010 and will continue to capitalize on this success. The two large CTIA conferences will put more emphasis on developers and their importance in the ecosystem. The private platform events will continue their popularity worldwide with Android events leading the way.
In 2011, we saw an increase of mobile conference in the Middle East, Asia and India. These areas are going to explode with more events in 2012. Events are going to continue strong in the Valley but will start to spread their wings further out as event fatigue sets in for Valley folk. Did you know that you can attend a meetup, hack
athon, mobile conference or developer conference pretty well any day of the year in the Silicon Valley?
Last year I predicted that developer conferences were going to continue to give out back packs… I was right. The prediction still stands for the upcoming year.
All the best for a prosperous 2012!